Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Brave Dungeon: "Do Your Best" Playing Level

The Playing Level you get for clearing the Godshill dungeon with no party member above level 20 takes a bit of strategizing, and given that I just did it, I'm here to share what I did. It's not possible without being on New Game +, because you need a few specific effects from the Syega Shop, and being able to include Zizou in your party will make the boss fights go a bit more smoothly.

Syega Shop Effects

Inherit 1% of Tres: If you start this New Game + from a save that has a lot of Tres, you could potentially buy a lot of stat boosts from the Power Up menu, making everything easier. I didn't carry over a heck of a lot of Tres, but I did pour basically every Tres I got into stat boosts. Having higher stats (particularly Attack) helps greatly for the Floor 2 boss, Papa Mudman, who can stalemate you if you aren't dealing enough damage.

Inherit Maps: While this isn't 100% necessary, it's very useful to be able to plan your route through each floor of Godshill. You absolutely need to avoid as many battles as possible.

Inherit Accessories: A Through Pendant is absolutely required, and given that the materials necessary to craft it require you to visit dungeons other than Godshill, you'll need to carry one over from another save. Other than that, you can bring over whatever you want. You'll only have access to two accessory slots per character, so your choice is fairly important. I carried over three Quadruple Strikers, two Magic Earrings, one Ultimate, and the Through Pendant. I wholly recommend carrying over six accessories in addition to the Through Pendant, so you can equip and unequip the Through Pendant as necessary.

Inherit Magic Items: At the minimum, you need Escape and a good number of the healing items. If you've already got a save that has all of the magic items purchased, this is a no-brainer.

Increase Revenge Power: Revenge Magic as a whole is kind of underwhelming in this game, at least when you have Quadruple Strikers around, but one character's Revenge Magic is very, very useful: Stoj's Come On Minions. It's a heal for the entire party that costs zero Capacity. With this effect, she only needs to be hit twice to be able to use it, and three times for full power.

Half Tres: Tres rewards from battles are directly tied to the amount of experience you get, and without Half Tres, you'll level up to 21 before reaching Bajel. To get an idea of how close it gets even with Half Tres, I levelled up to 20 on the Floor 5 boss of Godshill.

Life +500 and Life +1500: These combine to give you 2000 extra HP. Given that you'll just be rushing through Godshill at a low level, ignoring all the other dungeons, the extra HP is necessary to ensure survivability.

Attack +20, Defense +20, Mind +40, and Agility +10: It's simple, really. Would you rather have lower stats, or higher stats? Obviously, you want higher stats. There's no sense in deriving some sort of false pride from making things more tedious than they absolutely need to be.

Party and Game Setup

First things first, use an Escape to bypass the opening scene where Al runs into Godshill by herself.

Hold L + R when selecting Change Party, and set your party as Al, Zizou, and Stoj.

Press X and set the difficulty to Easy. Set any other options you want.

Equip the accessories you carried over, ignoring the Through Pendant for now. I equipped a Quadruple Striker on everyone, Magic Earrings on Zizou and Al, and the Ultimate on Stoj.

Once you're ready, head off to Godshill.

Godshill Route

In general, you'll want to fight as few battles as possible. To do this, the rhythm of each floor is:

Enter floor.

If necessary, swap out the Through Pendant for whatever other accessory you brought.

Take the path to the boss that results in the least number of battles.

Defeat boss, then equip Through Pendant. I personally equipped it in place of Stoj's Ultimate, but it doesn't really matter.

Make sure the doors on the floor have been opened. Not all doors need to be open, just the ones on the shortest route between the entrance and exit.

Use an Escape to heal and replenish Magic Items.

Re-enter Godshill and run to the next floor.

The only exceptions are just before Papa Mudman on Floor 2, once you reach level 10, and once you reach level 20. Just before Papa Mudman, you'll want to fight a few extra fights to get yourself to level 10. In this regard, your initial route through the floor should prioritize opening the door that lets you get to Papa Mudman more quickly when you re-enter the floor later. Depending on what your stats are, the level 10 Class Change stat boosts could make the difference between the fight becoming a stalemate, and actually defeating Papa Mudman. At a certain point in the fight, he uses Bodybuilding to gain Attack Up, Defense Up, Speed Up, and Regen. The Regen combined with the Defense Up is what's capable of making the fight a stalemate. None of the other bosses have to be worried about in this manner, including Bajel.

Once you hit level 10, and again when you hit level 20, you'll need to use an Escape to go back to Newport and Class Change everyone. Your choices matter a bit more here, given that you only get two Class Changes per character. For Al, I took Cold Block (for the stat boosts, I never actually used Cold Block) and Power Up All. For Zizou, I took Express and Disruptive. For Stoj, I took Funny Delusion and Rescue.

Once you start encountering the Metal Blubbers, the battle strategy changes a bit. Since they can run from the battle, you basically want them to do this. Kill off everything else and then just pass turns by pressing Y until it happens, making sure to keep yourself alive in the meantime.

In Conclusion

As long as you exercise a certain amount of intelligence in keeping your party alive, this setup should get you the Playing Level reasonably easily. I did have to have Stoj use Rescue a fair number of times on the second phase of the Bajel fight, because Double Hell Claw is a one-hit kill, but at no point did I ever really panic. Just have Al and Zizou keep attacking, have Stoj keep healing and reviving as necessary, and the fight will be over before too long. If Come On Minions isn't available, just use one of the Magic Items that heals the whole party.

Also, there may be images added to the Godshill Route section in the future, showing each floor's map and annotated with the route you should take. I'll have to do another playthrough of Godshill to make the screenshots, so it'll be a bit.